Getting Crazy

I think a stress that we haven’t fully realized is beginning to consume both The Boyfriend and I. It wasn’t apparent to me, until last night when a minor storm rolled over the house and I began seriously freaking out. Not just my normal regular “I’m-scared-of-these-storms” freaking out, but to the point that I, as I was cleaning the window to better be able to see the clouds, began bawling my eyes out. I could not seem to break the pending panic attack, no matter how hard I tried.

The Boyfriend did a wonderful job of staying extra calm and saying as many calming things as he could come up with. Not that anything he was doing was working the way he had hoped it would, but he was patient and relaxed and over the next two hours the storm passed by and everything was clear and I was finally calmed.

But then, The Boyfriend came home from work today, unusually stressed out. He normally comes home flustered from crap at work, but after you let him vent about it for about 45 minutes, he usually is less stressed. Not today. He has been, apparently, stressing pretty hard about money. I think that he thinks that I’m not paying as much attention as I am on the money. I proved him wrong and eased his worries there, thank goodness!

I’ve never, in the 4 years that I’ve been with him, seen him stress about money. Honestly though, I think it’s a whole bunch of different kinds of stress and he’s just focused in on the money right now. But I think it’s this move. I think he feels unprepared and I think he really hates that. Of course, I’m just piecing this together from what I know of him since it will probably take him another week or two to figure out what’s bothering him. Once we get right close to the move date.

He’s also majorly stressed out by work right now. He’s not looking forward to his training while he’s got so many things already on the go at the job. He just started a new initiative with his crew and he’s having to leave for 5 days. That frustrates him a lot. He’s also pretty concerned about leaving me here for 5 days alone with the kids, being that they have been a handful and a half lately.

Yesterday seemed like the longest day of my life and about an hour before The Boyfriend got home from work, I broke down in tears because I was so upset by them. They are all at such unmanageable ages when you stick them all together. I’ve got Carter, who is learning every bad habit his older siblings are teaching him, while at the same time just learning how to really talk. So, what we end up with is a full-of-attitude back talker. I don’t know how many times I’ll give him heck for something and he’ll sternly turn back to me and exclaim a solid, “No!”.

Kaeidyn and I are constantly clashing heads about everything. I woke up the other morning to her arguing with me about whether or not the nail polish she had found was actually hers or mine. Today, I had to give her a huge long lecture about respect and accountability. Try explaining that one to a stubborn 7-year-old… I walked away from that conversation with a headache and feeling like she hadn’t heard a single word that I said. And sometimes I wonder if she ever hears me or if she never will. My Mom had cursed me with my first-born being exactly like I was growing up, and if 7-year-old Kaeidyn is already like 13-year-old me, I am absolutely screwed!

Kenzie has been getting very rough lately, to the point where we’re almost worried about it. He doesn’t seem to notice at all how strong he is and it’s resulting in a lot of hurt people and broken house. From the window breaking, extreme rough housing and payback hitting. If Keirnan does something to him, that in anyway Kenzie doesn’t like, Keirnan will get a hard hit from his bigger brother. It’s mean and unnecessary and we’re just trying to figure out how to manage it. Today seemed to be a bit better, so we’ll just have to see what is going to go down.

Needless to say, we’re frustrated, stressed and exhausted and I don’t even think either of us have come to really realize it yet. I imagine that the 5 days that he’s gone are going to be an extreme test. All I can say is, there better not be any storms for those 5 days…

Neglectful

So I haven’t been doing much blogging lately. To think of it, I haven’t been on my computer much lately. I have been being completely neglectful of a ton of my “responsibilities”. Blogging’s not getting done, cleaning hasn’t gotten done, I’ve basically been doing a whole lot of nothing.

I have to say that I’m not enjoying it one little bit. I keep trying to figure out why it’s happening so much lately, and I think I’m just losing steam. I have nothing to write about lately. Nothing exciting is happening in my life (bit of a lie…), and I haven’t been scouring the internet for anything interesting (because I haven’t really been doing much on my computer) and I’m just finding it overall too hard to get motivated to do anything.

Tomorrow is my last day of full-time maintenance coordinator and I hate to say it, but I couldn’t be happier. I officially only like that job when it’s full-time. The only good part of being full-time is that you’re there to deal with things when it happens, so when people mention things days later, it’s easier to remember what they’re talking about, instead of sitting there with a clueless and quizzical look on  your face.

It’s been interesting how much I’ve had to deal with this last week. From a huge poplar tree that got struck by lightning and now has structural damage (yes, apparently trees can have structural damage, not just houses…) and will cost over $5000 to take down, to a bunch of places that had flooding, thanks to our bad weather, that resulted in drywall having to be torn down and carpets completely removed, to ex-tenants calling in and yelling about how little they got back from their security deposits… It’s been crazy to say the least.

Home life has been decent outside of all the darn storms. Over the last weekend, we had one storm rip through here that had me so panicked that I went and actually hid out in the bathroom. I’ve been so worried about getting the kids too worried about storms, that I normally will just try to be chill and you only really know I’m scared because of my body language. But this one came on so fast, the clouds looked so vicious and then it started hailing in the most wicked way and I just couldn’t contain the fear any longer. So I grabbed my laptop and ran my ass downstairs and slowly The Boyfriend had them follow me and we sat and watched YouTube until the hail stopped.

My fear and these storms is just getting out of control now. The littlest of wind or rain or dark clouds, gets me all riled up. It’s to the point where I’m literally considering talking to my doctor about getting anti-anxiety meds just for the harsh panic attacks I’ve been having. I’ve never had such physical ones before. All my old panic attacks were mostly mental and the physical parts of it were mostly chest pains from my heart feeling like it was going to explode or collapse, depending on the trigger.

Whereas these panic attacks are an all over the body type of physical thing. It starts with this crampy feeling in my stomach. Almost like I’ve done a few too many crunches during a workout. Then I get really sweaty, like I’ve just drank three or four hot coffees, one right after the other. All my joints start hurting, and I start breathing really heavily. Then the pacing begins and by this point the storm is normally done and I get hit with a wicked headache that feels like I smoked WAY too much weed.

I think I probably would deal with all better if it wasn’t happening day after day after day. I just am getting to the point where it’s getting to be too much. Especially being that a lot of the storms keep hitting at night, right as I’m going to get into bed. So I end up staying up way later than I should and by the next morning, I’m so exhausted that getting out of bed in the morning is the worst part of my day…

I’m really lucky to have The Boyfriend though. He has been so great with my fears lately! The night that I decided to go down to the bathroom, he helped me get all the kids down there and came in and checked on me and then went and checked on the storm for me and then came in the bathroom to report. Last night was probably one of the best nights for comforting from here.

I’ve been feeling pretty guilty for how many late nights I’ve made him have lately. Between my super over-active sex drive and these stupid storms, four hours of sleep a night is about all he’s getting. And he’s been wonderful for both. Last night, as the storm raged, he let me rest my head on his chest (even though he doesn’t like sleeping on his back – probably only because I’ve made him aware of the snoring that occurs in that position. On his side, he doesn’t snore…), even though it was incredibly hot in our room, and every time the thunder would roll or crackle, he’d gently rub my upper arm. For the first time in forever, I was able to roll over and go to sleep even though it had begun to rain.

He’s no longer making a mocking face at me when I start to get worried and now automatically goes into gentle and caring boyfriend mode. The second he sees the “I’m worried” look across my face, he quickly grabs me for a hug. While it may not calm me much, it feels good in hindsight.

I’ve decided, I’m blaming the neglectfulness of the blog, on the storms…

July 7, 2011 Central Alberta Storm (There’s Videos!!)

I’m hating the weather this summer so far. Have I ever told you how much I despise storms? My greatest fear in life is that I’ll be taken out by a natural disaster. It used to be lightening, then it changed to an unexplained fire, and now it is 100% a tornado.

Near Penhold, Alberta

On Thursday, we had a wicked storm and it was the first time I’ve ever been a part of a city that had a tornado warning that advised you to “take shelter immediately”. The worst part about the entire thing was that The Boyfriend had walked to the store…

So as we normally do when there’s a storm, we go out on the balcony and check out the rain, the lightening, the thunder and really I’m checking to see if I think it looks rough enough to be down in my bathroom! I walk outside and it’s still pretty light out, but I see a father and his daughter underneath of an umbrella. Then I see the Dad point to the sky and then they ran back into the house. Automatically I thought, shit a tornado is coming and I don’t know if The Boyfriend is going to be safe.

Clouds began billowing up into the sky at a speed that I’ve never seen before. The only thing at all that brought me comfort is that there was a plane following the storm and passing through the absolutely wicked clouds. It’s interesting to me how many people, when every information source is telling you to take shelter, will go outside. The street filled with people as my neighbor tells me a tornado has just touched down outside of Innisfail.

Near Penhold, Alberta

Then it starts hailing wickedly. Of course when I first learned of all the tornado warnings, I automatically read up on the internet about disaster preparedness. I knew what to do if there was a tornado, but I wanted some reassurance that I absolutely knew, just in case! Rain is usually not present during a tornado, but hail is. So that set off even more panic as I paced frantically in the living room wondering if I should wake all the kids up to go hide in the bathroom while we waited for The Boyfriend to get back.

By the time The Boyfriend got back, the hail had stopped and the sky behind our house turned a brilliant blue with light fluffy clouds. All I have to say is thank goodness for The Weather Network and @AB_EmergAlert. Because if I wouldn’t of been able to check those two things every few minutes, I’m sure a panic attack would’ve hit.

Near Sundre and Olds, Alberta

So far, no injuries have been reported even though a total of 4 (last I heard) tornadoes touched down in Central Alberta. No idea how many funnel clouds there were, I know of 2 in Red Deer alone. Though I don’t even want to know how many people, who all feel the same way about tornadoes as I do, are still worrying about it.

The last two nights has been pretty windy at night. It seems to be pretty calm during the day, just some cloudy skies. Then we get to night and the wind picks up. Falling asleep has been pretty darn hard, because being defenseless worries me. At least during the day, you can see the storm a-brewing. At night, not so much.

I hope, for my sake and for the others who are scared of storms, that this is the last bad storm of the year. I know it probably won’t happen, but I definitely don’t like when it happens and even more so, I hope that if it does happen, The Boyfriend is at least at home when it does. I also hope that this crappy weather goes away soon, so that I can get a really good nights sleep…

What natural disaster scares you the most? Or are you one of the lucky soles who isn’t really afraid of it? Have you ever witnessed a tornado or other disaster? Let’s talk storms people!